


Century City

by doieagenda



Series: Places we won't walk [2]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Hyuck in the city, M/M, Smoking, city, donghyuck-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 12:34:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28706751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doieagenda/pseuds/doieagenda
Summary: The city understands.It understands and feels his pains, his joys, his desires, and his loneliness. He is part of the city and the city is now part of him.Alternatively: Donghyuck in the city
Relationships: Huang Ren Jun/Lee Donghyuck | Haechan
Series: Places we won't walk [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2104320
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	Century City

**Author's Note:**

> hello! this is a short spin-off to my previous [fic ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27506854), so I suggest you read that first to understand this a little better :D
> 
> As always, thank you to my betas for everything! I know this was only supposed to be a secret between the three of us but here it is hehe <3 ily guys

In the grand scheme of things, Donghyuck knows he’s not going to stay in the rural boundaries of his small town. He knows that he was made for something bigger, like something was waiting for him outside of the pastures, the hills, and the lakes. 

After getting his acceptance letter from the big college in the city, the bliss and anxiety stained his whole being. 

This was it, the _something_ bigger that he’s been waiting for his whole life. 

It wasn’t like he was an outsider when it came to things like this. He’s been to the city at least twice in his whole life. The first time was when they celebrated his fourth birthday in a kid’s cafe, the second being a school trip to some museum. 

So stepping into the dorms, it was the final step to finally being free from the cages of small town living. He left the moment summer started, eager to finally explore something more substantial. 

He’s heard stories from Renjun over the years about life in the city. He would say that he prefers it in the province or something because the city is filled with monsters who suck the youth and life out of you. As well as shadows who lurk the streets at nights, finding some semblance of light to feed on. 

But him and Renjun are poles apart. It’s probably different to experience it firsthand. 

The moment he walks on the cold pavement, he feels the city come alive. It was magnificent in the sense that the sun feels different here. It reflects an orange glow against the soaring skyscrapers and casts an effervescent flare on him. 

Addicted, he basks in it like the heliophile he is. Someone said that he garnered his energy and magic from the sun. Maybe that is the case, if magic was real in this world.

But in the city, days were not as splendid. It was the nights that paralleled the days at home. Although he loved the sun and how it reminded him of his childhood, nothing compared to the beauty of the city lights. 

From his dorm window, he peeps out to glittering plains of lights. It was as if he was in a vast field of fireflies. 

Even at night, the city is alive. She never sleeps. It’s a different surge of energy, but in time, Donghyuck would find himself obsessed with it. 

The city listens to the resounding call of his loneliness. He’s spent a week wandering around parks, sketchy alleys, and roads yet it just dawns on him that he’s alone and lonely in the urban jungle that is Seoul. 

His father warned him about homesickness. This must be it.

His new roommate Lee Jeno comes just the following week. He, too, came fresh from the country. Jeno was like a clueless puppy around the labyrinth of the city, yet he wasn’t alone for he had him.

Donghyuck was right, the city is alive. 

The city sees him cry for the first time. It wasn’t out of sadness, but the pure anger of being stood up on a first date. The pitter patter of his boots on the cold, dirty concrete were all that resonated. He runs to Jeno and rants about how he can’t trust men anymore. 

Jeno flips him off and says that all city men are the same. Them country men are better off together. 

Donghyuck almost agrees until he remembers this one specific city dweller, Huang Renjun who always stays in the back of his mind.

He encounters the shadows Renjun has been talking about. It happened one fateful night after a midnight trip to the convenience store because Donghyuck clumsily dropped his toothbrush in the toilet. Jeno is still out, doing stuff Donghyuck has no clue about. 

On a dark alleyway, he spots a very familiar jacket. 

Of course it would be familiar, it’s his. Cautiously, he walks over to tap his roommate on the shoulder. Jeno turns around, his lips wrapping around a cigarette. 

Donghyuck tightens his grip on the convenience store bag and takes two steps back. 

“Hyuck?” Jeno asks incredulously, eyes going wide. 

“I-I went to the convenience store, and saw you here.”

Jeno blows a puff of smoke to his face, and he coughs pathetically. The two men Jeno was with, snickered at him.

“Want some?” Jeno offers, holding out an almost empty pack. He looks at Jeno and the other two’s expectant gaze and takes a stick. 

“Atta boy,” The long haired man who has a thick chinese accent says to him, lighting up his lighter. 

Donghyuck gulps and feels his head throb a little. Smoking has never been ideal to him because of lung cancer and all that jazz, but he supposes one wouldn’t hurt. He’s also read about how this works, but doing it for real wasn’t all that fun. 

Smoke filled his lungs and he coughed it up not one second after. Jeno smiles at him and pats his back. “Didn’t that feel nice?”

_It didn’t._

“Yeah,” He chokes out, still feeling like there had been a bomb blown inside of him. 

He never tried smoking again, telling Jeno it wasn’t for him. As much as he’d want Jeno to stop that habit, he knows there’s nothing he can do to convince him otherwise. Although they have each other, there’s still a void in them that they can’t fill themselves. They’re just two small lonely souls in this big city after all. 

Donghyuck remembered going here when he was four. In the car, he’d look out to the buildings and feel incredibly miniscule. He thought that the buildings would swallow him, that they will move when Donghyuck isn’t looking. Until he met Renjun who disproved that, he believed in it. 

It’s so easy to feel small in the busy streets of Seoul. He was like a speck of dust in a giant bowl however he isn’t afraid of it anymore. The city is alive but he was part of it. 

He’s grown accustomed to it after the first month. The ways of urbanity were already coded in his system, it runs through his veins. 

Though his daily routine was repetitive, the days never felt the same to him. He wakes up, drinks the tea his mom sent him, and rides the 11AM bus to the library. On the bus, he makes stories about the other commuters in his head. In the library, he watches the two people fall in love as they exchange book recommendations. He watches it happen like magic. 

After checking on the two strangers, he buries his nose in a new adventure everyday. He tries to finish the books in a day since he doesn’t have any markers for it. He kind of misses his mother’s garden at home but it doesn’t lessen the fun in reading nonetheless.

Donghyuck never thought college would come by so fast. It seems as if yesterday he just got off the bus from his small, rural town and now he’s here to fulfill the very reason he moved to the city. 

College is a different world in itself. Outside, there is no clear distinction between the good seeds from the bad ones. In college, everyone is just a flurry of rushing deadlines and cramming papers. 

Everyone's the same.

Donghyuck, as well as the ten thousand other students in the city, isn’t exempt from the taxing hold of college and young adult pressures. He took up literature because he loved to read and make stories but he didn’t expect that the system would suck the wonder out of it. Perhaps this are the monsters Renjun mentioned

Yes, he was very idealistic, but can you blame him? He was never subjected to anything else. 

Fairytales used to excite him, action gave him thrill, romance made him long for love, and mystery made the gears in his brain work. It was just that simple however, college made it feel like a chore. Like there is nothing to be subjective about.

But he knows that he has nothing else to do about it but just comply. He wanted this after all.

The city understands.

It understands and feels his pains, his joys, his desires, and his loneliness. He is part of the city and the city is now part of him. 

The city brought him back to Renjun on a random day while he was flipping through the Grimm Brothers tales. There was a serendipitous spin around their surroundings. The towers of bookshelves seemed to melt away as Donghyuck smiled at Renjun. 

Suddenly, he felt like he was back home again. Under the shade of the giant asian gingko tree, on the hill where they watched the sunset and the stars, in the middle of the fields talking about everything under the sun. 

“Renjun, hi.”

“Hello. How are you?”


End file.
